Hovde column on health care misses the mark

I will have to admit a bias against Elizabeth Hovde. On many a Sunday Morning, I have read her column instead of having a second cup of coffee to charge me up for the remaining chores of the weekend.

But Sunday's article about the health care system was plain distracting ("Without penalties for the noninsured, rates will soar," Oct 25). If anyone who is serious about health care reform wanted to list the things that had to be fixed first, making sure those with the means to buy insurance but decline to do so are charged a penalty would rank just above what color the logo should be for the public option.

The United States has the most expensive health care system in the world and for that we get results that put us on par with Portugal. Her focus on the irrelevant is the same small-minded shop keeper mentality that is keeping us all in the grip of private insurers. There are millions of hard-working, honest Americans who want nothing more that affordable access to health care. They do not need be be held hostage by a system that depends upon tenuous employment in an economy dropping jobs at record numbers.

And if I hear anyone use auto insurance as an analogy one more time, I will puke. I can always decide to structure my life to avoid the convenience my car offers me.

But when my oncologist told me there was no known cause for the rare for of cancer I have -- but my chances to defeating it were good -- my biggest fear was not a horrible and painful death, it was that someday I might not be able to get coverage to cover other treatable problems due to a previous condition.

I am fortunate enough that I might be able to pay for some medical bills on my own before facing financial ruin. But for those with little in reserve in the same situation, it is bleak prospect.

We can debate all day long whether health care is a right. But there is no doubt that as Americans it is an obligation to give our fellow citizens health care. It is a problem which has been solved by every other modern Western democracy at lower costs and with better results. Fixing health care is not about socialism, it is about being left behind by the rest of the world. The resistance by a minority of Americans, buoyed by insurance companies, to fix the health care mess we currently have is appalling.